Endoscopy in the medical fields allows internal features of a patient's body to be viewed without the use of traditional, fully-invasive surgery. Endoscopy is widely used to perform minimally-invasive medical procedures, such as arthroscopy, laparoscopy, gastroscopy, colonoscopy, etc.
A medical endoscopic imaging system includes an endoscope (or simply “scope”), one end of which is inserted into the body of a patient while the other end of the scope is coupled to a video camera. The scope may be a rigid scope, such as used in arthroscopy or laparoscopy, or a flexible scope, such as used in gastroscopy or colonoscopy. Images acquired by the camera are typically provided to, and displayed on, a conventional display device, such as a cathode ray tube (CRT) or liquid crystal display (LCD) based monitor, which displays live video. A high intensity light source is normally coupled to the scope by a fiber optic cable, to transmit light through the scope to into the patient's body. The camera may also be coupled to various peripheral devices, such as a printer, an image capture unit, and a video recorder. At least a portion of the endoscopic procedure is normally recorded on video.
Typically, after completion of a medical procedure, the physician dictates notes about the procedure, describing exactly what was done during the procedure, observations the physician made during the procedure, medications administered, etc. The physician typically dictates these notes into some form of audio recording device or system. If the medical procedure was recorded on video, the physician might dictate his notes while viewing the recorded video, perhaps mentioning in his dictation the timestamps of certain key frames and what was happening in those frames. The dictation (audio recording) may be provided to a transcription service, which produces a written record of the dictation for the patient's file.
The physician may also generate a set of instructions for editing the recorded video; this set of instructions is sometimes called a “cut list”. The video recording normally includes a displayable timestamp for each frame. The physician would typically take note of particular frames he wished to include in a presentation or edited version of the video, and then write down (or dictate) editing instructions including the timestamps of selected frames and particular actions related to those frames. For example, the physician might include in the cut list an instruction such as, “Add the two minute segment starting with frame timestamped 12:04:17 to the end of my presentation.” The physician would then provide the cut list to a video technician, who would edit the video based on the cut list using special software tools. Alternatively, the physician might mention the editing instructions in his dictation, such that the transcription service could generate the cut list.
When a medical procedure such as endoscopy is recorded on video, it is desirable for a physician to be able to associate certain annotations directly with particular frames or segments of the video, to make it easier for someone viewing the video to understand what is being shown. For example, if certain frames of a video from a laparoscopy procedure show the patient's gall bladder, it might be desirable to be able to place the label “gall bladder” on top of those frames, so that the label is visible when those frames are displayed. This capability is particularly needed in endoscopy, where the field of view of the video camera is extremely small, often making it difficult for an observer to determine the context and to discern what is being shown. However, such capability is not known to be provided in the prior art.